Fans walking out of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey have the same question on their minds: who exactly is this version of Telemachus before Tom Holland’s character ever steps into frame? The movie drops us into a kingdom already boiling over, and understanding what came before makes every scene hit harder.
That’s because The Odyssey isn’t really the start of Telemachus’s story. By the time Holland’s prince appears on screen, he’s already spent close to two decades living with a hole where his father should be. Nolan’s script leans into that history rather than explaining it away, which means the movie rewards fans who know what Telemachus was doing before the cameras rolled.
Who Is Telemachus and Why Did He Grow Up Without Odysseus?
Telemachus was still an infant when Odysseus sailed for Troy, so in every meaningful sense, he never actually knew his father. Ithaca’s king left when the Trojan War began and never came home for the next twenty years, leaving Penelope to raise their son essentially alone in a palace that slowly filled with strangers.
That absence is the entire engine of who Telemachus becomes. He grows up hearing stories about a father he can’t remember, surrounded by a court that assumes the king is dead. By the time he’s a young man, more than a hundred suitors have moved into the palace, eating through the family’s wealth while they court his mother and wait her out.
Telemachus spends those years frustrated and largely powerless. He’s old enough to see exactly what the suitors are doing to his home and his mother’s dignity, but not yet secure enough in his own authority to force them out. That tension, a young man who feels everything and can act on almost none of it, is the version of the character Holland stepped into.
What Was Telemachus Doing Before ‘The Odyssey’ Begins?
In the source material, this stretch of Telemachus’s life is often called the Telemachy, the portion of the story focused entirely on him before Odysseus reenters the narrative. It covers a young prince pushed to the edge of his patience, who finally calls an assembly against the suitors and sets sail in secret to hunt for real news of his father.
By the time the wider story kicks off, Telemachus is done waiting quietly. He’s ready to call an assembly, confront the men occupying his home directly, and go looking for real answers about his father’s fate instead of secondhand rumors. That’s the pressure Nolan’s film picks up on, a prince who has spent his whole life being told to be patient and has finally run out of patience to give.
Holland has described the role as the best of his career and a life-changing experience, and it’s easy to see why the part appealed to him. Telemachus isn’t an action hero waiting for his moment. He’s a kid who grew up in the wreckage of his father’s legend and has to decide, in real time, what kind of man he’s going to become because of it.
That coming-of-age arc is exactly what gives The Odyssey its emotional backbone alongside Odysseus’s own journey home. The Odyssey is now playing in theaters everywhere.